The Red Panda Tshirt
by OwlinAMinor
Summary: Nobody recognizes that the animal on Yao's t-shirt is a red panda. Well, maybe not nobody ... RoChu oneshot. AU. Christmas present for Kageegak.


**THE RED PANDA T-SHIRT**

**RATING: K+**

**PAIRING: RoChu**

**GENRE: Humor & Romance**

**DESCRIPTION: Nobody recognizes that the animal on Yao's t-shirt is a red panda. Well, maybe not nobody ...**

**LENGTH: One-shot.**

**POV: China**

**Hetalia characters, please consider yourselves disclaimed. (Like a boss.)**

**This story was a Christmas present for Michi, a.k.a. KageEgak.**

* * *

><p>I don't really know why I chose to wear the red panda t-shirt that day. Maybe it just happened to be at the top of my clean clothes pile. Maybe my subconscious mind picked it for me. Maybe some sort of higher power destined it to be the shirt I wore that day. Maybe it was the squirrels – you can never trust squirrels.<p>

But that's not important.

The important thing is that, that one day in mid July, I went to camp wearing my red panda t-shirt. It was quite a nice shirt, actually: red (the color of royalty) with the most _adorable_ red panda on the planet in the center. I could've hugged it all day. It was my favorite shirt.

I thew on the shirt and a pair of cargo pants, tied on my sneakers, brushed my hair and put it into its usual ponytail, trudged downstairs, ate a bowl of cold white rice and some cereal (it works, okay?), fed my panda, exchanged tearful goodbyes with my panda, yelled at Im Yong Soo when he teased me for exchanging tearful goodbyes with my panda, bickered with Im Yong Soo all the way to the bus stop, and hid from Ivan – the scary, tall Russian kid who had been chasing me around (and, as a result, freaking me out) since preschool – while waiting for the bus. You know, typical summer morning stuff.

When the bus finally came, I lucked out; there was a free seat next to Herakles, a Greek kid who was always asleep and, therefore, never tied to talk with/antagonize/molest me.

At least, I _thought_ I'd lucked out until the impossible happened:

He woke up.

Through half-open eyes he sleepily gazed at my chest for an uncomfortably long time, and I was all ready to defend my manliness (i.e. lack of breasts) when he asked, "Yao, why, exactly, do you have a raccoon on your shirt?"

"It's not a raccoon, it's a red panda, _aru_!" I protested, but he'd already fallen back asleep.

As it turned out, that encounter set the scene for the rest of the day. Once I got to camp, every single person I met asked me why I had a raccoon on my shirt, and none of them believed me when I insisted that it was a red panda. Some of them even took it a little bit further than that. Kiku Honda, a shy, Japanese boy, spent ten minutes patiently explaining in his annoyingly polite way that red pandas didn't exist. Lovino Vargas, an angry Italian, called me a fucking idiot. Well, he called pretty much everyone a fucking idiot. But still. I usually escaped insult by agreeing with him about the idiocy of everyone else.

Anyway.

Can you imagine the annoyance?

Every. Single. Person. Refused. To. Believe. That. It. Was. A. Red. Panda.

Okay, not _every_ single person.

Gilbert Belishmidt said that it was, and I quote, "most definitely a purple, polka-dotted, three-headed triceratops," but that was probably just because he was trying to impress everyone else with his awesomeness. (Which he didn't, for the record.)

Arthur Kirkland actually agreed with me, but I'm almost positive he only did that because he wanted to disagree with Francis Bonnefoy, the French pervert with whom he unceasingly argued, to the amusement of most of the other campers in our unit. (I, personally, thought it was a stupid and childish waste of time.)

Well, not every single person believed that the animal on my shirt was a raccoon, but none of them really agreed that it was a red panda, either. It turned out to be quite a bad day, over all: during free swim, there was a water drill, and Ropes got delayed as a result, so I didn't get to go on the zip line – the inhumanity.

Later, at afternoon flag, I was sitting near the back of my unit, complaining to Herakles about how nobody ever listened to me when, suddenly, I was attacked from behind.

Huge, meaty arms … a creepy laugh … a scarf, even though it was summer …

HOLY PANDAS.

I was being glomp-tacked by none other than Ivan Braginsky, the one person whom I spent most of my energy trying to avoid.

_Gou pi._

"Yaaaaoooo~" he exclaimed, squeezing me so tightly I could barely breathe.

"What the – get off me, you – communist – vodka-loving – panda-hating – bastard, _aru_!" I stammered.

"Я прошу прошения," he said, releasing me and plopping down on the grass next to me instead.

"Oh, there's a rock here," he observed, prodding aforementioned rock. "Привет, rock. I'm just going to throw you out of the way. That's okay, да?"

He then proceeded to pick up the rock – which was about the size of my two fists put together – and toss it ten feet away, where it narrowly missed hitting Toris, the Lithuanian boy, in the head.

C-creepy …

Ivan turned back to me, a scarily happy smile on his huge-nose-infested face. "So, what was I going to tell you? Oh, Я помню! I wanted to tell you how much I like your shirt. It's a red panda, да?"

…

Um …

Am I in an alternate reality or something?

Have cats suddenly become un-cute?

Has Francis suddenly stopped being a pervert?

Has Gilbert suddenly stopped calling himself awesome?

WHAT IS THIS.

…

This is my face: ._.

This is my face after Ivan recognized the red panda on my t-shirt: 0o0

…

It took a few seconds for my brain to fully compute the information, and then, I saw only one possible option:

To run away as fast as possible.

"_Dui bu qi_, Ivan, _aru_, but I really have to go to the bathroom _aru_ I didn't realize it before now _aru_ please don't chase me _aru_ please don't hurt me please don't please please please I just want to go back home _aru_ to my panda where everything is safe _aru_ and … AAAAHH!"

"Yao, you're so funny~"

After that, luckily, I was able to avoid the scary demon-child until after the bus ride, when he cornered me as I was walking home. (Im Yong Soo had stalled to talk to – i.e. claim the breasts of – Alfred, an irritating American who he somehow managed to stand.)

"Yao, I think I deserve a reward for being the only one to know that the animal on your t-shirt was a red panda, not a raccoon," he said, actually looking serious, not smiling, for once.

"Well … um … _wo bu dong_ … _aru_ …" I muttered, trying not to look at him and failing miserably – he was just so _big_, like a sign for free rice that you just couldn't not notice. "Wait, how did you know about that?"

"Francis told me~!" he explained. "He's a nice guy, don't you think? A little weird, but everyone is weird, да? Except you, of course. You're just really cute~."

…

"I-I am, _aru_?" I stammered, blushing.

And I found myself being grabbed by the arms and swung around so that his massive, Russian nose was less than a centimeter away from my own slanted, Chinese nose before I could shout, "_Bu xiang!_"

I … I had never been this close to another person before … not like this … it was scary, really scary … but … for some reason … I liked it … and I wondered if maybe I hadn't always ran from Ivan because I was afraid of him, but because I enjoyed being chased by him …

"Да," he whispered. "So, what do you say, Yao? Do I get a reward? Could I maybe go on a date with you?"

Well, what was I supposed to say?

Did I have any choice, really?

It wasn't just that he would have killed me if I hadn't agreed – although he probably would have, or worse, sent his insane younger sister after me – but it was also that I was starting to think that maybe it wouldn't be that bad.

Maybe Ivan wouldn't be that bad, once I got to know him.

"Да, _aru_" I said, the confidence in my voice surprising myself.

"Ура!~!" he exclaimed. "Спасибо, спасибо, спасибо болшое! Ты молодец!"

And then he was hugging me tightly, and I felt as though I was caught in a cocoon of warmth and happiness and _Ivan_, and … well …

I actually quite liked it.

…

"BIG BROTEHR! How come you'll hug Yao but you won't hug me?"

"AAAAH! NATALIA! RUN, YAO, RUN!"

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS:<strong>

**Russian:**

**Я прошу прошения. = I'm sorry**

**Привет = hi**

**Да = yes**

**Я помню! = I remember**

**Ура! = yay**

**Спасибо = thank you**

**Cпасибо болшое! = thank you very much**

**Ты молодец! = you're the best**

**Chinese:**

**_Dui bu qi_ = I'm sorry**

**_Wo bu dong_ = I don't know**

**_Bu xiang!_ = Do not want!**

**_Gou pi._ = Shit.**

**This story is actually based on a real life event - when I asked Michi for her request for a Christmas present, she said she had no idea; I should just write something I knew she'd like. And this, something that happened when we were at camp last summer, came to mind. I thought it fit RoChu the best, plus Michi is China in our Hetalia-obsessed group of friends, so ... boom. Story. There was no Russia in the actual event, though - just me (England), Michi (China), our friend Katie (Greece), my sister (America), and a bunch of kids who thought her shirt had a panda on it.**

**(And, yes, someone actually did say that he thought it was "most definitely a purple, polka-dotted, three-headed triceratops." I made him Gilbert because he was wearing a shirt that said, "you can't have AWESOME without ME" at the time.)**

**I don't ship RoChu, but I still think the story turned out fairly cute. Yao might have been a bit OOC, though, since I don't write or read about him much ...**

**Reviews are loved more than Yao loves pandas. :)**


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